


Disappearing Acts

by charlottesometimes



Series: Fragmenting Flames [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Another fic by me another character I project alcohol issues onto, Canon Compliant, Fire Siblings Week 2020, For the tv show, Gen, Mental Institutions, Post-Canon, Siblings, Zuko (Avatar) Angst, alcoholic zuko, azula angst, i mean he's getting there, teen rating for alcohol use and angst, there is a glimmer of hope in there tho i promise, this got dark i'm not going to lie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27194308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charlottesometimes/pseuds/charlottesometimes
Summary: After the war, the Fire Lord decides to start visiting his sister in her cell.But ... what did he think would happen, exactly? Did he think he could help her? That she could help him?He doesn't know what he thought he would find--but this isn't it. Zuko doesn't know if he can handle this.
Relationships: Aang & Zuko (Avatar), Azula & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Fragmenting Flames [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985173
Comments: 10
Kudos: 46





	Disappearing Acts

**Author's Note:**

> This is canon compliant and post-TV show. It takes place before the first comic arc, though, so you don't need to know The Promise to read. (In my mind, however, The Promise and The Search do follow the events of this fic.)

When Zuko visited Azula in the adult care facility for the very first time, the door to her cell stood ajar. 

Zuko’s footsteps stuttered. His Fire Lord’s cloak flapped behind him as he stopped short. He looked at the attendant standing at a desk nearby. He asked, urgent, “Is she in there?” 

The attendant glanced up at the door casually and began to nod. 

But then she saw the door. She froze. Without a word she rushed toward the cell. “Code red!” she shouted down the hallway. “We have a code red on the princess!” 

Zuko’s stomach dropped. The blood began to pound in his ears. He hadn’t slept the night before--too much to do, and too much to think about even when he wasn’t doing it--and his brain felt sluggish, filed down, not up to this. 

Not up to tracking down Azula. Not up to fighting her back into a cage. What if she’d already found their father? What if she’d broken him out? Should he go--

The attendant’s voice rang out from inside the cell as Zuko drew up to the doorway: “All clear … actually.” 

A handful of facility workers in red and white pressed into the cell around Zuko. But after a moment, he managed to get inside. 

The walls were cinnamon, the carpet blood red. Plush furniture and décor suggested this wasn’t a cell, but six sets of chains bolted to titanium floor panels gave the lie to that. 

On the floor near an inner door, sprawled like a rag doll, hair splayed in every direction, lay Azula. She wore no top knot. Her clothes were badly askew, like she was a corpse when someone dressed her. 

There were no chains on her hands or feet. Nothing at all to restrain her. She just--lay there. And through the curtain of her hair, Zuko glimpsed the worst thing of all: A gleam of listless golden eye. 

The attendants got the chains on her wrists and ankles. They sat her up against the wall, asked her questions. One of them asked another how this could happen: How the door could be left open, how she could have been left without chains. “Well at least,” the first attendant said, “she didn’t escape.” 

Zuko could hardly breathe, and he couldn’t say why that was. _Why didn’t she escape?_

“Fire Lord,” one of the attendants said. “We’re so sorry. We’ll investigate this matter fully. It’s just, we’re such a new facility. We’re still trying to work out our protocols.” 

Zuko waved him away. “It’s okay. Just leave us alone.” 

They did. With deliberate care they told Zuko there would be four guards just outside the door awaiting his request for exit, and locked the door behind them. 

He turned to face his sister. 

The wall propped her up; Zuko’s mind kept returning to the image of a rag doll. But again, her eyes were open. They gleamed like--like doll’s eyes, like buttons. They reflected the room around her, but did they see it? 

Zuko sat on the floor across from her, wincing at his still tender abdominal injury. His daily ceremonial garb protested at being twisted into a cross-legged position. 

When he'd situated himself he said, “What kind of trick is this, Azula?” 

She gave no indication of having heard him. 

“How did you get out of your chains?” 

The only movement near Azula was the reflection of Zuko in her irises. 

“Did you open the door?” 

No answer. 

“Could you do it again?” 

As if Zuko’s eyes were adjusting to darkness, he thought his gaze might be attuning to Azula’s stillness. Faintly now, he could see her chest rise and fall. 

“Is this an act?” 

Her silence felt like an affront. An insult. A slap in the face. A failure of duty. Zuko _did not like it._ “Answer me.” 

His own breath sped up, chest rising and falling hard in contrast to Azula’s shallow breaths. “I said answer me.” 

Her complete unconcern made Zuko rocket to his feet. He began to pace. He ran his hands along the red walls, touched the furniture, raked a hand through his hair. He still felt exhausted, but now he also felt like he had to run from something. 

“Explain this to me,” he said, now half aware that he was talking to himself. “Explain what is happening to you. Explain what this is.” 

He threw himself down on a settee. He stood back up. A gemstone lampshade tinkled as he brushed it with his fingertips, feeling for something. 

“Explain to me,” he said, “why you get to disappear, and I’ve got answer alone for all our crimes?” 

A throat cleared outside the door, as if one of the attendants was communicating: _We can hear you._

Zuko was past caring. He realized only now that he'd been looking to this meeting as a beacon for weeks; he wanted something from Azula. But what? “Explain to me,” he went on, voice rising in spite of himself, “why I’m out there, sitting at tables with people who hate me for being too soft, and people who hate me for being too hard, and you’re in there”--he pointed vaguely toward her skull--“and you don’t have to deal with either one?” 

Anger had risen to high-tide in Zuko, risen up past his mouth and nose, up past his eyeballs. He was having an argument with himself. How did you get twisted up in an argument with a ragdoll? 

“I think I hate you,” he said aloud. 

Did Azula’s stillness get … even stiller? 

Zuko shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. His breath went uneven. His friends were all gone, attending to their own duties and nations, and that’s the way it would always be. Iroh was gone. Mai was still here, but she didn't understand. She didn't understand because Zuko didn’t know how to explain himself, how to be just -- a regular man. A person. 

Why had he come here? Had the idea of bringing company to a captive made him feel like a hero? Was he really that weak and foolish? 

“I don’t hate you,” he said. His voice came out quiet enough that he knew the rage had passed. _Thank the spirits._ “I’m sorry.” 

A strand of Azula’s jet black hair fell from where it curled on her shoulder, sweeping down across her chest. 

Eventually, Zuko remembered to breathe, and he left the cell, left the facility, kept walking until he was in his own quarters, alone. 

_I’m fine,_ he thought. _I’m fine. Azula always gets me like this._

 _Azula always lies,_ he told himself. _Even when she does not speak._

***

Zuko thought about writing to the care facility. He thought about making them tell her: _The Fire Lord won’t see you until you agree to speak and act like a human being._

But that option felt too good. It felt too much like vengeance. He was better than that now. He was.

He had to be. 

So he settled on a schedule. On Wednesday afternoons he went to Azula’s cell. He sat and watched her rag doll routine. He reached down deep inside himself and scooped out kindness he did not have to spare, and spoke to her softly, read her stories, told her about Iroh’s letters and the palace parrot-grackles and the frivolous gossip he got from Lo and Li. 

Then he went back to his rooms, the palace staff on strict orders not to bother the Fire Lord on Wednesday night. He lay drained on a divan and told himself, over and over: _Azula always lies._

Azula grew thinner as the months went on. She wasn’t eating, the attendants said. 

Zuko’s time lying in exhaustion on the divan got a little better after a month or two, though, when he discovered that he could also drink sake, while he repeated: _Azula always lies._ When the room began to spin, he almost didn’t care whether Azula ever spoke again. 

Aang and Toph visited in the spring. Katara and Sokka were at the South Pole, gathering data on how to administer the first relief fund the Fire Nation had given to the Southern Water Tribe. 

He let Aang into his personal quarters, and only when Aang’s face contorted did Zuko remember that he hadn’t let anyone into these rooms in months. Clothes lay in piles on the floor, piles Zuko could easily have had a servant clear up. Crumpled letters littered every surface. 

But Aang picked up a sake bottle. There were maybe a half-dozen empties scattered through the room. “Hey, Zuko?” Aang asked, face clouded even though they had been happily discussing plans for the visit just a moment before. “Are you okay?” 

Zuko collapsed onto the divan. Wan afternoon light fell across his ceremonial dress, and he loosened the collar, feeling stifled and overheated. “No,” he said. “Not usually. But that’s okay. I’ll feel better when the world is a little quieter. Peace hasn’t been peaceful, not yet.” He tried to give his friend a half smile. 

“I don’t know if this,” Aang held up the bottle, “is such a way to get through it, though.” 

“I know,” Zuko said. Because he did. “It’s just …” 

Aang curled up on the end of the divan, eyes serious. “Tell me.” 

Was Aang really only fourteen? Had he really only been thirteen when he changed the world? Aang seemed sometimes almost like Iroh: Like he was a deep well of ancient wisdom. Had he just been born that way? Or did it just feel that way to Zuko because he had so little wisdom of his own? 

Zuko took a deep breath and explained--as well as he could--about Azula. “And every time I see her, I’m just so drained afterward,” he finished. “I don’t know why it affects me like this. But she gets to disappear. So I guess …” He knocked over an empty bottle with his pointed shoe. “I guess I want to disappear too.” He held back the rest of what he’d nearly said: _It isn’t fair._

“But only sometimes. Right?” Aang asked. 

Zuko nodded furiously. “Only sometimes.” This was not true. It was more like, _Only about half the time._ Or maybe three quarters. 

But he would be fine--when the world was fine. 

“I get that,” Aang said. “But my friends always make me feel better. I think you’ll feel better after hanging out with me and Toph. Right?” Aang said. 

Zuko smiled. It felt good to smile. “Right.” 

***

Zuko did feel better while Aang and Toph were there. And he felt better for a while afterward. He reverted to just resting, after he saw Azula, rather than drinking. 

But the good feelings from seeing his friends faded as the months went past. The world only grew more unstable--there were riots in several cities where the Fire Nation had withdrawn, and local leaders called for the Fire Nation to send troops to stop the rioters. Some of the local leaders just seemed to want the riots to stop, but others demanded outright that Zuko hand them full control of Fire Nation garrisons to quell the rabble … as reparations. Opinions on what to do about this were so numerous among Zuko’s advisors that he alone would have to make the decision; he alone had to select the correct answer from among two dozen choices. He began to drink on more nights than Wednesdays. 

On a gray fall Thursday Zuko awoke with a splitting headache, and it didn’t go away as the days grew shorter and shorter and the solstice drew near. 

“And the, uh …” Zuko trailed off as he sat across from Azula in her chain-bedecked sitting room. He squeezed the bridge of nose and forced his neck muscles to loosen, desperate for relief from the headache. “The palace staff told Li, well, you know …” He couldn’t even recall what story he’d been telling. 

“Tell me about Ozai,” Azula said. 

Zuko’s eyes flew open and his spine straightened. He peered at his thin, pale sister. “Ozai?” 

“Yes,” she mumbled. She did not sit up; she remained draped across the settee like a doll. She still wore no top knot, but Zuko assumed that was because she did not move at all. She went on, only her lips moving, “Ozai. Father. The Phoenix King.” 

Months ago, Zuko had imagined that progress in Azula’s case was inevitable. He realized now that he’d given up that hope. He’d begun to imagine that she’d escaped for good. That he was alone in the palace. 

So was he imagining this, now? “Father is alive, as I’ve mentioned,” Zuko said quickly, eager to hear her speak again. “What do you want to know?” 

“The servants here … ” Azula said. She reminded him a bit of Toph, the way her mouth moved but her gaze pointed at nothing. “They jabber to me about him. ‘He’s safe and sound, like you are. If you talk, you might see him some day.’ But I am neither safe nor sound. So I wonder. Is he in a cell too?” She picked up her head. Her eyes fixed on Zuko, hard as diamonds--Zuko had never been so spine-tinglingly pleased to be pinned by a vengeful gaze. Penetrating him with her eyes, she went on, “Or is he dead, in truth, and no one wants to tell me?” 

“He’s not dead,” Zuko said. He wanted to tell her everything--everything in the world, if she wanted to know it. He had to physically restrain his tongue. He felt energized for the first time in months. “He is in a cell, too. But it’s considerably less nice than yours is.” 

“What happened to him? How did he end up in a cell?” 

Zuko told her the story, haltingly. Aang’s victory, the power of the lion-turtle. “He’s stripped of his bending,” Zuko said. “He’ll probably be a prisoner for life.” 

“Like me.” 

“This is actually,” Zuko said, gesturing around them, “a health care facility.” 

“That’s a clever lie,” Azula said. Her loose hair had grown matted around her face. With no makeup, but sharp eyes, she looked like a witch in a play. 

“It’s also something like a truth,” Zuko said. 

Azula made a noise, like a dangerous animal. “Do you like your power, Zuzu?” 

“No,” Zuko said simply. 

“You never did. I can tell you do not, still.” 

“Why did you …” Zuko swallowed his words. He didn’t know where she had gone, for the last year. He did not want her to go back there. 

“Yes?” 

“You called him Ozai.” 

The persona of the witch cracked. Azula collapsed back onto the settee, a ragdoll once more. _No. No, no, no, no--_

“Leave me,” she said. “I’m tired now. Come back next Wednesday.” 

That night when Zuko got back to his rooms, he cleaned them with his own hands. He fell asleep naturally, sober and exhausted. 

***

The new routine was this: Zuko came on Wednesday. Azula peppered him with oblique questions. Zuko answered what he thought she meant. Azula often lapsed back into silence, but she never asked Zuko to leave again. 

Sometimes, he brought paperwork with him, and quietly read and wrote letters as Azula sat and breathed. 

Sometimes, Azula’s questions made no sense. He gathered that she was afraid of some female attendant at the facility. But Zuko was just so glad she was speaking at all that he simply did his best to answer her and continue the conversation. 

Books began to appear in her sitting room, an allowance Zuko approved of. Azula clearly began to eat; her complexion improved and she stopped looking as thin as Zuko had been during his stint as a Fire Nation fugitive. 

But she still wore no top knot. 

Aside from that, though, Azula probably looked healthier than Zuko did. Zuko's high at Azula’s return to speaking had worn off quickly as the Fire Nation colonies became the center of a major international conflict. Zuko drank himself to sleep as often as he didn’t. No one knew, and that was the only thing that comforted him about this liquor-assisted détente he had with sanity. 

Then, one day, Zuko shut the door to Azula’s cell behind him and saw a woman in a straight jacket. 

He froze in the doorway. 

Scorch marks marred the carpet and wallpaper in one corner of the room. Azula’s posture was upright, attentive; her hair had been pulled into a messy top knot. 

She watched him closely, her eyes nothing like an unseeing doll’s eyes … and yet Zuko still wondered if she really saw him. If maybe she actually saw through him, or saw someone else in his place.

“You tried to escape,” Zuko observed. 

“Wouldn’t you?” 

Exhaustion got the better of Zuko. It pricked at his eyes, at the back of his brain. “I wouldn’t be locked up in the first place.” 

“An easy thing for the victor to say.” 

Angry energy crackled over Zuko’s skin. He paced, rubbing his eyes, trying to outrun his headache. “Can’t you just … get better?” 

“Better? Define better.” 

“I put you in here, and not in a cell,” Zuko said, stopping in his tracks in a lame attempt to seem more angry and less agitated, “because I thought you could get better.” 

“I said,” Azula said, her eyes blazing with her own unique mixture of murderousness and mirth, “define better.” 

“Yes!” Zuko said, answering the question she hadn’t asked. “Yes, I mean better--both in terms of your health and your morality. Okay? Yes. I want to let you out of here. I want …” 

“Mm, Zuzu,” Azula said, her tone implying that Zuko was in for a legendary mocking. “You want it to be like I’m six years old again?” 

_Yes._ “Couldn’t it be? You weren’t always--” 

“A monster? But I was.” 

“You weren’t,” Zuko said. If there was anything in this conversation he was sure of, it was that. “I know that. You know that. And maybe no one else in the world does. But we do.” 

“Maybe.” Azula shrugged. She looked him in the eye and pulled his only solid ground out from under him: “But a rotten apple can never be fresh again.” 

“You’re not a rotten apple,” Zuko said. 

“Who said I’m the apple?” 

Zuko just glared. _Azula always lies._

“Though,” Azula said, “judging by my nose over this last year, you’re actually more of a pickle than an apple. Aren’t you?”

Twin impulses to run away from that observation and to find a way to throw back the insult broke against Zuko. 

With an absolutely legendary effort of will, though, he grabbed a hold of himself. Mechanically, he moved forward. He knelt in front of where Azula sat, bound and chained. He looked up into her face. “You lost,” he said. “Because you thought you could do it alone.” 

Azula scoffed. “Look in a mirror, Zuko.” 

“I want to love you, Azula,” Zuko spat back. “But I only want to.” 

His words hung in the air. Azula’s golden eyes were hazy, filmed over--with exhaustion? With anger? 

She inhaled. That was Zuko’s only warning. The blue fire broke from her lips. Heat licked at Zuko’s face. 

He drew upon the dragon’s wisdom. He raised a hand--but of course the hand wasn’t fast enough.

It didn’t matter though. The dragon’s lesson poured from Zuko like water breaking through a levee. He received her fire and reshaped it. The spiral of multicolored flame he wove with her fire spiraled up into the ceiling. 

It died in a puff of smoke and soot. 

Zuko shot to his feet. He snapped into a fighting stance and called a flame into his hand. “Don’t.” 

Azula’s chest heaved. Had the shadows under her eyes deepened, just in the last few moments? She looked like a witch again--no longer a princess. A thing from the fringes. “Leave me,” she said. “And don’t come back next Wednesday.” 

Zuko left. 

*** 

He drank two whole bottles of sake that night, alone in his study. He swallowed down the first so quickly, he could not remember opening the second. 

The next week, the crisis in the Fire Nation colonies came to a head, and Zuko did his best to work himself into catatonia. 

It was going to be a long reign. 

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment if you read the whole thing, comments are life <3 I will gladly accept even negative feedback. Feedback prevents me from becoming a sad little bacteria copying itself over and over again alone under a rock until one day the rock gets turned over and I am unprepared for surviving in the outside world and so I die a sad little bacteria’s death all alone.


End file.
